Simple Inventory System Overview

The Simple Inventory System (SIS) is a stand-alone inventory management program, first included with EP Evaluator Release 8. Its primary purpose is to keep track of the Quantity on Hand (QOH) of items in the storeroom (reagents, controls, office supplies, etc.). This section describes the basic tasks and concepts underlying SIS, more from the standpoint of what needs to be done than how to do it.

SIS can do the four general tasks listed below.

• Count items for Physical Inventory, manually or with a barcode scanner
• Receive items into Inventory
• Check items out of Inventory, manually or with a barcode scanner
• Create a Shopping List

Setup Tasks

Before you can use SIS, there are a few one-time setup tasks:

• Hardware Setup - connecting the barcode scanner to your computer; setting up a label printer to print barcode labels. While SIS can be run over a network (if you have a network license for EP Evaluator), the typical installation will use a single workstation for reading the barcode scanner and printing barcode labels.
  
• Database creation - think of a database as a folder on your hard drive that holds files of inventory data. One of these databases is the Example that we ship with the software. You will have at least one database for your lab. If ordering is not centralized across departments, you may choose to create a separate database for each department.
  • Access to each database is restricted by a login. There are three classes of users: Administrators, Operators, and Guests. Administrators can do anything. Guests can see the data, but are not allowed to change it. Operators are somewhere in between -- they can enter inventory transactions, but may not define inventory items and users.”Creating” a database includes the process of assigning user names and passwords, and assigning each user to the appropriate class.
    
  • Note that if you set up separate databases for each department, the user administration process must be done for each department.
    
• Defining Inventory Items - making a list of the items you want to count. If you currently use a spreadsheet to keep track of inventory, you can reformat that spreadsheet in a form to paste into SIS.
  • Each inventory item has an item name (30 characters), an item group (32 characters), and a part number (10 characters), all of which print on the barcode label. The name and group are on the label for human readability. The part number is what the barcode scanner reads. You may use vendor part numbers for barcodes if they are short enough and contain no special characters. Also, each inventory item is assigned to a Count Sheet. The point of a count sheet is to make sure every item gets counted when you do physical inventory.
    

  EXAMPLE: For example, John is responsible for physical inventory for some of the items, and Mary is responsible for the rest. Perhaps John is responsible for a stock room, and Mary for a refrigerated area.  John's items are assigned to Count Sheet 1, and Mary's to Count Sheet 2. When it is time to do physical inventory, you can use SIS’s Make Count Sheets function to produce separate lists for John and Mary to show what they need to count, and the expected quantities in stock.

  • Another important data field is the Divisor. This field applies when you order the item in whole boxes, but want your staff to check out a partial box when it is removed from the storeroom. For example, you might order reagent in boxes, where a box contains 5 bottles. In this case, the divisor is 5 -- 5 bottles per box.

Ongoing Tasks

Once you have set up your system, there are four main ongoing operations you will perform with SIS:

• Physical Inventory - counting all the items on the shelves. You must do this once to establish the initial stock. You will also do periodic physical inventories on a recurring basis to confirm that the check in/check out process is working satisfactorily.
  
• Receiving - adding items to inventory when an order arrives at the lab. Barcode labels are printed and attached to the boxes as they are placed in the storeroom, so subsequent checkouts can be performed with a barcode scanner.
  
• Check Out - subtracting items from inventory as they are removed from the storeroom. A barcode scanner is placed in the storeroom, and employees are instructed to scan each item as they remove it. The scanner is not connected live to the computer -- it is simply a memory device that holds a record of what items were scanned. Once a day (or perhaps once a shift) the scanner is collected from the storeroom and its contents are uploaded to the computer. Scanner memory holds about 350 barcodes.
  
• Making a Shopping List - looking at the QOH (Quantity On Hand) screen and deciding what items need to be ordered. The items can be selected into a separate, permanently stored “list” within SIS. The first thing you will do with this list is to print a Shopping List Report to serve as a basis for ordering. When the order arrives, you can use the same shopping list to print barcode labels. The process of attaching these labels to the packages is a way of confirming that you received what you ordered -- if you have extra labels, the order was incomplete. Once you have confirmed that the order is correct (or corrected the quantities in your shopping list to agree with what you received), you can add the shopping list to inventory.